


Program X

by miss_nettles_wife



Category: Eerie Indiana
Genre: (in the worlds largest pair of quotation marks), Case Fic, Death, Disection, F/F, F/M, M/M, autospy, moderate gore, paramilitary organizations, secret agents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-13 09:42:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28651452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miss_nettles_wife/pseuds/miss_nettles_wife
Summary: Janet's mission to investigate an abandoned premilitary base takes a turn for the interesting when she encounters an entity known as 'Program X'.
Relationships: Janet Donner/?, Marshall Teller/Dash X
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	Program X

**Author's Note:**

> This was initially an Advent for Froodle for the prompt 'Turn on the light’ Well. Now it's this. This is the longest eerie indiana fic I've written to date, and also the longest thing I've written in the last two or so years. Not a bad way to start the year.

“JD, please report in.” 

“Miss Eden!” Janet greeted the voice in her earpiece cheerfully as her car zoomed down the streets that marked the edge of Eerie and out into the great unknown between them and the next town over. “How are things in paradise this afternoon?” On the other end of the line, there is a crackle of static that passes before she replies. 

“Better if I wasn’t sending you into an abandoned paramilitary base.” 

“I’ve seen worse.” Janet defended, “Remember the cult in Normal New Jersey?

“How could I forget?” Eden asked the sound of her keyboard clacking in the background. Reality is always a bit foggy on the outskirts of Eerie. There’s always an ominous fog, that is to say, rolling in front of her car so thick that Scooby-Doo would cut it with a knife and eat it from a bowl. She’s used to it, having made many a trip outside of Eerie in her last few years on the job. “I had to get that awful tattoo.” 

“I liked the tattoo.” 

“You would.”

“I like flowers.” 

“You like that hideous thing but my tattoo of a UFO is ‘tasteless’ and ‘racially insensitive’?” 

“I only said that if we’re ever invaded that they might not take kindly to a member of the government having a stereotype tattooed on her underboob. I never said I didn’t like it.” Scoffing, she turned off the bitumen coated beaten track onto a dirt road that led into deeper fog. If you were going to run a freaky paramilitary organisation...This would be the place to do it. Her ‘this isn’t right’ instinct was going off like a siren. Marshall used to say it was her secret superpower, having an ability to know inherently when things were not right. She was unconvinced it was a superpower, and more a collection of strange and unnatural elements that she was reading and listening to rather than ignoring and heading right into like he did. 

Right now, it was the thickening fog, the knowledge that a secret base had been operating out of Eerie’s Outskirts for the better part of fifteen years without detection, a weird conversation with Simon this morning while she stopped at the World O Stuff for her morning shot of pink, strawberry flavoured caffeine, the fact that she heard Dash and Marshall’s song on the radio on the drive out here (Univac and the Humanoid, a song for which she had never had a taste) and it was all weighing on her. 

Having weird conversations with Simon is not inherently a red flag when he took over the World O Stuff he took over being weird from Mr Radford as well. But unlike Radford, who seemed to revel in mystery, Simon was still Simon. Still friendly to a fault, still charming, still well versed on strangeness...And still sporting a head full of curls. Whenever Janet entered, Simon would usually already be preparing her drink for her in a way that was. Well. Eerie. Her drink, which was really called ‘The Janet Special’. The Janet Special was coffee spiked with beetroot (for colour, she’d never actually tasted the beetroot.), served over ice cubes that were pink with what Simon called his ‘secret ingredient’, a large dollop of whipped cream and a pink oreo. Melanie has called it an abomination. Stacey thought it was like drinking tooth rot. Even Marilyn couldn’t pretend to like it. Janet thought it was the best coffee she’d ever had. For someone with no official barista training, Simon really knew how to make a good coffee. 

Daydreaming about her empty plastic cup aside, however, as she fussed with getting cash from her purse -since she has no credit card- Simon had given her a pinched eyebrow look, then asked her a question no one has asked for a long time. 

“Do you think Mars and Dash are together?”

Momentarily stunned by the question she almost dropped her twenty dollar note on the ground. 

“Huh?” 

“Dash and Mars. Do you think they’re together? Do you think Mars found him? That if they’re gone, they’re at least together?” She let the question marinate in her mind. The pink oreo fell through the whipped cream into her coffee. 

“What makes you ask?” 

“I don’t know. I had the strangest dream last night, that’s all. Marshall and Dash, but Dash was stuck. I don’t remember anything else.” Finally handing over the money she picked up her drink and took a long sip. Then -

“I have no idea. I hope they are.” 

“I thought you’d say that,” Simon says, and handed her the change. She dropped the coins into a donation container by the register for a missing peoples foundation, but it could be anything. It could be ‘Simon’s Holiday In Fiji Fund’ and she’d still put her coins there. It was only after she was back in the car when she paused to consider that Simon must be shaken up seeing that he hadn’t even asked after the wife like he usually would. Feeling unsettled, she turned on the radio to fill in the noise as she reported for her next assignment. Call her crazy, as most would, but she truly felt like Dash...Or Marshall was reaching out for her through the void. She kept it to herself but it remained like a stone lodged behind her tonsils. 

“Okay, looks like your coming up on your destination. Give me a run-through of your gear.” Her destination seemed to be an abandoned-looking shed with a rusted shut door. Some secret base indeed. 

“Service weapon, vest, time taser, two watches, flashlight, satellite phone, earpiece...Comfortable shoes.” 

“Hm. You might not be able to hear me when you enter. I can’t access any cameras inside, a piece of software called ‘X’ is stopping me.” She couldn’t ignore the prickling feeling on the back of her neck that rose up suddenly, but she knew that it was probably nothing. There were lots of programs called X, as she’d learned since joining the bureau. Most of them were for no good projects. But it just added to her strange, unsettled feeling. “Your first priority should be disabling program X, and allowing me to see the facility. 

“Yeah.” she acknowledged, pushing open the door to her large, black car. Making sure her belt was properly equipped she moved toward the door of the shed. The rust came away on her fingers when she tried the door but surprisingly there was a strong locking password lock holding it shut. She walked once around the perimeter of the building and saw nothing unusual or out of the ordinary. Just a usual looking old shed. The old mill had been torn down years ago, like many of the abandoned buildings in Eerie had been during Mayor Chisel’s attempt to build cheap housing for people moving here to work at Things Inc but the shed looked like it could be cousins with it. There seemed to be very little of interest around to see. Some trees in the distance, fog rolling in thick waves...A small dirt path that showed now real use recently. With no secret trapdoors revealed to her, she made a move closer to the door, with a keypad. Eight dots each with a shape on it, all of them seemed to be related to the triangle. There was no additional branding to be seen. 

Frowning, she tried to force her way in. Thump. Thump. Thump. Her shoulder bounced off the door. It was much thicker than she’d previously thought, and it was causing a pain in her arm that went all the way down the bone and curled into her palm. Looks like she was going to have to do the lock then. Bummer. She unclipped the time taser from her belt. A time taser technically called a ‘reversal device’ looked much how it sounded. A rectangle with two prongs and a red button on the side. She pressed the device against the keypads until the prongs clicked closed, then she pressed the side button. A jolt of electricity shot up her arm to the shoulder when it activated but years of practice allowed her to keep it in place. The electricity static feeling passed, and she watched as the buttons began pressing themselves backwards before clicking unlocked. Tucking her time taser away to her belt she smirked to herself as she stepped inside. Nothing like outsmarting someone who didn't even know you were coming. 

  
“I’ve gone through the first door.” She reported into the earpiece, unsure of the thickness of the building she remained standing outside.   
“I saw the spike your reversal device caused,” Eden said, Janet can just about hear the rolling of her eyes. “There was no easier way to do it?” 

“I’m sure there was but well. I’ve never been known for taking the easy route.” 

“Indeed.” Eden confirmed, “Okay, go ahead and enter.” 

Needing no further prodding, Janet entered the building and used her flashlight to illuminate the inside. It seemed to be the inside of a shack, except for a trapdoor half-hidden by rotted floorboard. Using one hand, she flipped up the wood and gave the panel a once over. Metal, sturdy. Much cleaner than the outside door and equally locked, this time by a retinal scanning device. Looks like they didn’t want anyone getting in, but Janet has never been one to let a locked door stand in her way. Producing her time taser for a second time in as many minutes she pushed it against the surface of the lock and watched as it clicked to open. Without wasting a second, she hauled the metal open and peered into a dark underground tunnel. Well, here goes nothing. 

She stepped outside again and checked her earpiece. 

“Eden, this is JD. I’ve opened the entrance and I’m about to go in.” 

“I suspected that those temporal shifts were you.” Eden says, “Good luck. I’ll be watching the area for anything unusual.” 

“In Eerie? Everything is unusual.” 

“Get going,” Eden said, but the affectionate eye roll is in her voice. It still brings a smile to Janet’s face, even as she faces off against the unknown. 

Her boots landed with a clack on the floor of the building. She shone her flashlight around, taking in her surroundings and making a plan of action. The walls were metal and reminded her of a doomsday bunker. Dreary and in need of a fresh coat of white paint. She’d landed in a long hallway, on either side were a row of doors that slid downwards and was each opened by a panel with the outline of a hand on it. Whoever these guys were, they took security very seriously. She didn’t recognize the technology, nor the style of overhead lights that reminded in the off position even as she began to move. Not triggered by movement then. In a split second choice, she decided to stay close to the wall and not announce her presence as she moved, this whole place was giving her that creeping sensation. 

As she progressed down the hallway, she tried the first door she came across more out of curiosity than anything else. She removed the black leather glove from her right hand and pressed it palm down against the flat of the device expecting it to come to life. It stayed dim. She knocked gently on the door following that but received no reply. If someone was in there, then they weren’t coming out. So she moved on, not bothering with any of the other shut doors she encountered along the way down the main path. If one was off, it stood to reason that the others would be off. 

At the end of the corridor was a circle room with two hallways coming off of it, each at a ninety-degree angle from where she was standing. Above her head, a light flickered on. It illuminated the grey walls around her, and cast a small amount of light into each hallway. Interesting. She looked carefully to her left and saw a long, dark hallway with several doors coming off its downwards side, and then to the right. One door in the hallway was splattered with a thick layer of dried blood. Curiously, she turned away from that hall towards the one closest to her. The lights remained off, but the lights in the hallway on the other side all clicked on. Curious, she turned away and headed down that hall instead. This hallway had only two doors on it, and a sign labelled ‘Mess’. So, some kind of cafeteria then? Seemed strange to have it back here rather than the front but then again, strange paramilitary beggars can’t be strange paramilitary choosers. Lights pressed on, each attempting to lead her towards the end of this hallway. She was reminded of the music video for Billie Jean as she eventually came to the middle of the hallway where the bloody door resided. The light continued clicking forward, trying to push her along but...She was curious. 

Unsure, she approached the bloody door and took stock of it. A ...liberated.... arm lay in front of the door, severed at the shoulder and holding onto a...Tablet of some kind. Not something she was familiar with, certainly not government but about as advanced if the width was anything to go by. She knelt and took the tablet into her hands, the screen waking up when she pressed in a button on the side. Fortunately for her, it did not seem to require a password and opened easily. Inside she found little of interest. Seems it had been scrubbed of any worthwhile information so she set it back down and looked to where the lights were now vigorously flashing on and off further down the hall. With one last glance at the blood, she turned away and continued. 

Not without caution. Janet had been inside places controlled via hostiles on the network before, and she didn’t know if it was friendlies guiding her to a safe zone or the cause of expiration for the poor soul who lost their arm but...What was the alternative? Ignore it, but that risked angering it and the last person who angered it seemed to now be down an arm. So onwards she pushed, staying close to the wall, her eyes on the prize. At the end of the hall was another circle room she avoided entering. The overhead lights lit up down a corridor pushing her to keep going straight. For now, she decided to play along and followed down a hallway, before taking a left as directed. Now, she was in a large, exposed room. Three bodies lay slumped over their meal trays. She approached and took the pulse of each one as the lights began to flicker over her head. She ignored them and recorded the vital signs of each to be deceased in her notepad. The person sitting on the side of the table with their back to the door she just entered from was wearing a pair of grey tracksuit pants and a thin white top. Her long, white-blonde hair was tied back into a braid so tight that her hairline seemed to have been pulled with it, along with the skin of her face tight to her skull. There was no obvious cause of death Janet could see as she moved to the other side of the table where two people, a man and a woman, had collapsed. The man she could see had been electrocuted. She could tell from the way his hand was fastened around a metal spoon so tightly that the metal had cut his hands. No blood, so probably post mortem. He was also white, with white-blonde hair and a long scar down the centre of his face. The third person, a woman this time, Janet recognized as someone she’d gone to high school with. June Rakatansky, she used to play the drums. June looked much the same as she had in high school, long curly dark hair, olive skin and a dotting of sweet freckles across both cheekbones. She joined Melaine’s GSA club during it’s doomed run, but she can’t recall if she was G or S. Doesn’t matter now. Janet also recalled June having a good head on her shoulders, not easily swayed by the strangeness around her like so many others were. How she ended up here was a mystery. But there was no point in lingering here - June was dead. She scratched out ‘Jane Doe 2’ and wrote ‘J. Rakatansky’ instead. There was little else of any interest here at his table and no other dead people around so she pushed onwards as the lights overhead guided her towards a kitchen door. She took a few hesitant steps toward it, the smell was intensely rotten, and it wasn’t difficult to find the source. A bowl on a metal tray was practically radiating the scent of decay. She frowned deeply then said aloud - 

“No, absolutely not.” 

Over her head, the lights flickered off, then on again. 

“No.” 

“Take me a different way. Rotting kitchens is above my pay grade.” The lights flashed with seizure-inducing rapidness before stopping and then lighting up in a different direction, this time heading out through the side of the room opposite to her. Whatever they were going to show her in there was going to have to happen a different time because there was no way she was going near the smell of dead fish and rotten salad. She’d worked for the town sushi bar in highschool - not an experience she wanted to repeat. 

This time, she obeyed the lights, exiting the mess hall and into yet another hallway. It was a long walk from there to the next corridor, and the lights then seemed to be pulling her down a set of stairs. Janet took a path down the middle this time, she didn’t feel any imminent danger from these empty halls and doors that didn’t open. They felt far safer than the ambiguous kitchen. As she walked, listening to the sound of her shoes on the ground, she tried to remember the last time she spoke with June. Was it...Hm. It was hard to remember. She couldn’t. Her last concrete memory of her is that she was standing in the crowd during Edgar Tellers run for the mayorship with a sign in support of him. And that was when they were still in high school but after the dissolution of Melaine’s club. A potential temporal abnormality, or just the passage of time taking its toll on a relationship that was never that close? When you look for patterns, you find them everywhere. Was it the same with her? She spent her time looking for moments in time when the balance of things shifted. 

Tachkeloyn portal use, the odd invention at Things Inc that accidentally disrupted the timeline...People finding script pages in their mailboxes. Janet still has pages from a Sitcom called Nikki - if she ever needs an out from this reality - hidden in the walls of her home. The largest shift she’d ever seen, and what they usually compare smaller ones too was the NBC Incident in 1992, involving Unknown Entity ‘Dash X’ and Marshall J. R. Teller. What the exact cause of that remained unknown and her attempts to pump both Dash and Marshall for information had yielded very few results. And then there were the other jobs, like monitoring the papers and news stations for people who vanished into thin air lest they show back up again, Janet’s least favourite job. So perhaps, as someone who is tuned to look for weirdness, she sees weirdness where she looks. Or maybe an abandoned paramilitary base is weird. 

None of the doors she passed were open. Most were opened by a handprint, and if they had power then she would be able to use her reversal device to get in. Perhaps whoever was leading her with the lights was also able to selectively power certain items in the building, that would certainly explain it. One panel lit up as she passed it, and no further lights illuminated the hallway. 

“So are you going to open this or is it up to me?” The lights buzzed but after a second, they flickered off then on again. She unclipped her time taser and pressed the prongs into the panel. Then, she clicked in the side button and received a large jolt of electricity up her arm. The panel turned green and the door slid up with a whooshing effect right out of Star Wars. 

She stepped inside and found...Two large bunks on either side of the room, both of them made so tightly you could bounce a penny off them. No personal effects visible, two-foot lockers probably full of jumpsuits of military-style clothing. A laptop sits on the desk between the two beds, pushed up against the wall. Whatever the entity controlling the lights wanted her to see she wasn’t seeing it. Allowing one hand to fall to her side she tried to get a feel for the space. Something was not right about this, but what? There was a layer of dust atop everything. No footprints in it, not a crease on the bed sheets or even a trace of someone else’s deodorant - there was nothing here. She nudged a footlocker at the base of the bed with her foot and found it was empty, moving with only mild exertion on her part. What was she looking for? Were all the rooms on this level like this? Empty? Just this one? She didn’t have enough information to come to a conclusion. She opened the laptop with one hand and found...Another palm reader disguised as a laptop? Weird. Like the one outside, it was lit up in yellow. Taking her reversal device she pressed it against the touchpad and with a sigh, clicked the button. Electricity jolted up her arm, causing her hand to tighten around the device before relaxing. You never do get used to it. 

The panel flipped to green with a click and to Janet’s surprise, a handle emerged from the bottom bunk to her left. Janet grabbed hold of it, finding it fits ergonomically into her hand. She lifted the bunk and peered down a hole in the ground, leading to a whole other level of the building. Smart, but what could they possibly be hiding down there that would require this much security? The creeping feeling that has been following her all morning since she got her drink from Simon intensifies. The idea that Dash has been down there for fifteen years is almost too terrible to think about. That he was never more than a hundred miles from them, as Marshall drove himself crazy searching, and Janet had no choice but to distance herself from him. That he could have been saved, that he could still be with them, that the strange little family Simon had built for himself could still be whole. It feels like biting into a power chord. It would be easier to turn back now, get a signal with Eden and say she needs backup. This is too much, she’s too close. 

Things she’d written off before come back to her, making a point. Friend requests from empty accounts on Facebook. Emails about sales on trench coats from stores she’d never signed up for. Marilyn inviting everyone over for the weekend only to serve Swedish Toast Pudding. Increased numbers of Corn Hat-Wearing Freaks. Simon’s dream. Sheldon Allman on the radio. Program X. 

A dash and an x on the back of two small, white hands. 

A plus and a minus, like a battery. 

She wasted no more time sliding through the tunnel into a much more claustrophobic space. The lights above her no longer seem as though they are a threat, instead, they feel like arrowheads, pointing her in the direction of her missing friend. She jogs down the passage, the lights brighter and brighter above her. One foot in front of the other, she can practically feel it inside her, warmer and warmer. 

Turn one corner, than another. 

The lights are coming faster now, picking up the pace alongside her. She passes a staircase claiming to be heading down to a reactor. Passes bedrooms. Passes a mess. If there’s people in them she doesn’t notice. She’s sprinting by the time an arm shoots out of a room and grabs her, forcing her into a stop. She grunted in pain as the grip tightened to bruising and pulled her inside a small little office. Out of breath and confused, she looked up to find a small group looking at her. A man with stringy blonde hair and a military-style patch on his shirt claiming his name to be ‘Arthur’, a woman in a blood-spattered lab coat with tangled red hair and wide green eyes. Another woman with hair pulled back into a strict bun, her face lined with slight wrinkles. 

“Who the fuck are you?” The man asks, aiming a gun at her. Janet eyed the weapon and tried to calculate her survival rating if she was shot. Probably not high. 

“I’m J. D. I’m with the Temporal Disruptions Bureau, investigating rapidly shifting dimensions within this building.” 

“That damn portal.” The one in the lab coat swears. “I told you it was going to attract too much attention now we’ve got the damn feds breathing down our necks!” 

“Shut up.” The woman, a senior officer, orders with a bark, “And for God's sake, Arthur, lower your gun.” 

“No can do ma’am, not until I know she’s not a threat.”

“If I was going to kill you then you wouldn’t see me coming.” Janet deadpanned, eyes roaming around the space for more clues. Such a large structure for three inhabitants. There were three upstairs, and another in the hall were there more? Where are they? A lot of questions, not a lot of answers. Seems to be the theme of the day. 

“I bet she’s here because of that Alien. I knew this was all a mistake!” The scientist exclaimed, her voice is high pitched and tight. “If it wanted her dead, then it would have killed her already.” 

“The alien?” She asked lips pulled tight into a line. “Short. Grey hair. Plus and minus?” 

“So you know the one.” The lab coat responded. 

“I would expect nothing less of Janet Donner.” The military officer said, remaining tone neutral but one eyebrow, thin and shaped, rose an inch up her forehead. 

“So you know my name, not very impressive seeing as I’m kind of a local legend. I have a drink named after me you know.” 

“We had our eye on you for a while.” She says, “You’d have done good work for us.” 

“What is it exactly that you do?” Janet asked, disturbed to know that there was competition for her before she was even old enough to drink. 

“We’re preparing for the inevitable merge of dimensions, and ensuring that ours will survive.” 

“Dimensional merge? Been there. Done That. Got the t-shirt.” She deadpanned, thinking of Mitchell Taylor, Stanley Hope and Rodney. Of the first year without Marshall, where they had to fight evil cable guys and shut off the link he was working through. She’d had to reveal her true career to Simon, though he didn’t seem to remember when he came too after the explosion in the highschool A.V Lab. Last time they spoke, Mitchell wanted to retire from a life of weirdness and focus on his career as a pathologist but they both knew as well as anyone that weirdness would find him. It was his destiny if you believed such a thing and Janet does. 

“Excuse me?” 

“What you missed the fact that our universe tried to consume another a few years ago? Or is there another that I should be worried about?” 

“The dimensional merge couldn’t have happened, seeing as we have the catalyst in our laboratory.” Said the lab coat wearer. Janet thinks she might remember her from high school too. Heather something or other. She played the guitar and liked to write songs about boys. She had no idea she would be interested in science, but then again they were never friends. Janet found her to be vapid. 

“What is the catalyst?” 

“You came here and you don’t know?” 

“You’re a secret paramilitary organization what exactly am I meant to know?” 

“How did you find us?” The military lady demands, she’s not liking Janet’s tone but in her defence, it’s the only one she knows. Blame it on Dash, but someone needs to be the rude one. 

“Program X was bombarding us with pings, clearly they wanted us here.” 

“It.” 

“Huh?” 

“It’s an it.” Heather corrects, “Not a they.”

“Whatever. What is it?” 

“Well, I have my theories -” 

“That makes no sense.” The military woman interrupted,

“But there is no other explanation so it has to be the alien.” 

“The alien?” 

“The one we captured, who powers this base.” She explained, “Our grey-haired battery, so to speak. We wanted to see if we could replicate its powers, so we moved it out and began a dissection -” If Heather was still talking than Janet couldn’t hear it. The walls closed in on her in waves, a red hot terror grasped the top of her skull like a clamp. Dash had been here, on the edge of town, being torn to fucking shreds and she’d been what? Getting married? Having a life? Marshall was right about her. 

“What?” She interrupts. 

“Huh?”  
  
“You’re vivisecting a living person?” 

“It’s not a person?” Heather asked, quizzically, “I just explained that to you.” If Janet had one single sliver less self-control than she did than she may have just snapped. But instead, she narrows her eyes, lets in and out a deep breath and tilted her head to the side. 

“How did he take control of the wires?” 

“I don’t know, but it has to be it controlling the base. Everyone else is well. Deceased.” 

“How many did you have?” 

“About seventy, all up. I think most of them were fried when it messed with the portal.” Said the guard, whose gun is still aimed at her. 

“And you can’t stop him?” She asked, frowning. Dash had been leading her to somewhere but honestly, she didn’t even have plans of this base. So she had no idea where. And these people were armed and dangerous. 

“We’re locked out of the system. I don't know why it let you in.” 

“Because it knows her. Before we captured it the entity was operating under the alias Dash X, but I assume you’ve figured that out already.” 

“I have.” She confirmed, “And I must admit I’m not exactly thrilled that you kidnapped a friend of mine or that you’re spying on me.” The door to the room attempted to close repeatedly, but it caught on a large piece of metal holding it open. 

“It’s trying to kill us, but not you.” Says Heather. “So why’s it messing with the door?” 

“Probably attention-seeking.” Says the one with the gun. 

“Dunno. He never did like me, perhaps he’s just trying to kill all of us at once. Save some time.” Says Janet calmly. “Speaking of, what am I going to do with the lot of you?” 

“Help us escape?” Heather asked hopefully. Janet raised an eyebrow and pretended to think about it. 

“Well, as much as I’d love to do that, you did kidnap someone so I can’t really let you go.” 

“It’s not a someone, and it’s not a citizen so you have no jurisdiction.” Pointed out the commando chick. 

“Well, I subscribe to Descartes.” She said, pronouncing it as ‘Dez-Carts’. “He thinks, therefore he is. Kidnapped, that is. So if you submit without a fight to me then I’m sure Dash can be persuaded to spare your lives.” 

“I’d rather die than submit to that thing!” Exclaimed Heather, which seems out of character to Janet. She’d never been prejudiced in highschool. That Janet knew of, but she did date that skinhead for a while after so maybe she was just good at hiding it. 

“I’m sure that can be arranged.” She said, sardonically, “But really. It’s either me or it's him. I don’t see what your other options are.” 

“Killing you and putting your head on a pike as a warning?” The army guy said, keeping his gun on her. 

“You know I’m an agent of the law, right? Just how dead do you think you’re going to be able to get me because if you shoot me and I don’t die one hundred per cent then you’re fucked.” 

“What the Hell does that mean?” 

“I can use the space-time continuum to my advantage. You see this?” She asked, holding up her reversal device, “It’s made to open locked doors, but it works pretty good on the body too. I can stick myself and go back to before you shot me….And I might shoot you.” 

“You don’t have a weapon.” 

“I do, I just haven’t drawn it yet, being an agent of the law I’m not meant to go around executing people - no matter how deep my personal dislike.” 

“Why do you dislike us?” Heather asked. 

“Is that...Why do I dislike you? You kidnapped and vivisected an innocent teenager.” 

“Dash X was no angel, he was a menace. Do you remember when he tried to kill your dear friend Marshall?” The woman with the bun is speaking in a calm tone that seems to be...Trying to persuade her. In the most condescending way, she can. Annoying. Makes Janet want to shoot her. 

“Marshall’s not my friend anymore.” Janet pointed out, “And he was a starving, tired homeless kid. I think he’s entitled to a few bad decisions. Anyway, this has gone on just about long enough. I stopped the dimensional merge, there’s no need for this group to exist.” 

“You think we’ll just let you arrest us?” 

“Pretty much. Come easy or not but you will come all that.” Before they could rebut her, the overhead light began sparking and then exploded sending shards of glass as thin as a hair down onto them. Janet used the distraction to leap forward onto the most pressing threat, the one with the gun. Once he was down, she delivered a swift punch to the face to keep him down. Now armed with the weapon she turned to point it at Heather who held both her hands up in surrender. Behind her, she heard a gasping and turned to see the army woman, still no id visible, clutching at her bloody throat. The exploded light must have caught her, she surmised, before leaping into action to try and stem the bleeding. It was no good - it was an arterial bleed and as blood pulsed hot and red against her fingers...She lost her. Janet stood up and surveyed the damage. Heather’s hair was covered in shiny little glass particles and she could feel them on her too, cutting into the spaces between her fingers and the fold of her jacket and her neck. Grunting, she brushed them aside and brandished a pair of handcuffs at Heather. 

“Wh-What’s going to happen to me?” She asked, softly. 

“You’ll be taken back to my division, probably tried with kidnapping an interplanetary being. If he’s dead then you’ll be charged with murdering an interplanetary being.” 

“What’s the punishment for that?” She asked, softly, as Janet lowered to the ground. 

“Vivisection. Ironic huh?” Carefully, Janet adjusted the settings on her reversal device and stuck it into the thickest part of her thigh. 

“Wait, you don’t mean that do you? Janet, I’m a scientist! I could help you!” She was lying, of course. She assumed the punishment would probably be prison time, not that it was much better. Maybe they’d use her to do some actual research or run the library. It was no concern of hers. Hitting the button on the side, the electricity jolted through Heather, making her thoroughly unconscious. Before she exited the room, she was sure to safely handcuff her army friend and take his gun for prosperity. 

The hallway, when she returns to it, is as bright and foreboding as ever. 

“You could have done that sooner.” She says, to the air. Above her head, the light flashes once, the fluorescent bulbs making a hollow ping before lighting again. Whatever. She continued down the hallway, slower now, taking greater stock of her surroundings. She doesn’t deign a second encounter with these lunatics. She also wondered if she should have taken up Eden’s offer to send backup. It was meant to be a quick scouting job but a glance at her three wristwatches tells her she’s already been here for some hours. Keeping a reasonable pace she allows Program X to lead her down the hall, another left, and then to the front of a white, shiny, clean looking door. 

After it (he?) opened it for her, she found herself in what was very clearly the front of an operating room. Long sinks in a line, scrubs, gloves, iodine. She’d only ever been this close to surgery once when they had gone into Melaine’s chest a second time. Thankfully, whatever showed up on the scan had vanished by the time they opened her up. If it was due to the heart being haunted or what Janet didn’t know, and neither Devon nor Melanie had been forthcoming with any answers. 

She didn’t expect any, what went on between Melanie and Devon was their own business. Unless it concerned her, of course. But Janet worried. Transplanted hearts usually only last around ten years, and sometimes it seemed to her that Mel was living on borrowed time. Not that Melanie saw it like that of course, she was too busy testing products for Things Inc and making messy artwork shaped like hearts. 

With some reticence, she entered surgery with no scrubs. Hot lights beat down on the person strapped to the gurney and right away she was hit by the smell of rot. Desiccation. Disgust. Bile and pink coffee flipped around in her stomach as she slowly approached the bed. The small, pale white body that was strapped there didn’t seem to have grown much since they were kids. The cavity of his body was wide open, red with blood and brown with dried skin. Each hand was captured in a large, grey-white canister, each canister was attached to the wall. Each leg was held in place by wide, white straps. Beneath his spread ribs, his heart persistently beat, in slow, long thumps. 

Before she had time to say anything, the large screens on each wall lit up into a static, before dissolving into an image approximating Dash.

“Janet.” He says, the speakers giving his deep, rough tone a tinny sound. 

“Dash.” She breathed, the top of her head burning in some unexplainable feeling. “Oh, God. I’m so sorry.” 

“You’re really here.” He marvelled, but the image on the screen doesn’t give her any hint as to his feelings. “I thought I was never going to see - I want to go home.” 

“You need to let up on the block over telecommunications. I’ll call for my handler, they’ll send an ambulance and you’ll be -” 

“NO!” She shut up the second he spoke, frozen in place and shocked by the outburst. “I don’t care about the body. Leave it to rot for all I care, it never did anything for me that I couldn’t do for myself.”   
“How did you…?” She asked, not even sure what she was looking at other than that she could just feel it was Dash. Deep inside her, she knew it was him. 

“I was powering this place so long, I started to figure out how to control it.” He confided, “And when they started cutting me up...I just let go. Detached from my body. I don’t need it. I don’t want it. I want to go home.” 

“If you...It dies will you be okay?” 

“I’m not attached to it anymore. I want to go home.” 

“How do I take you there?” She asked, turning her back on his body and looking up at the screen earnestly. 

“Do you have a phone charger?” 

“Yeah.” She held up a USB cord from the inner pocket of her large, green pea coat. 

“Plug it into that machine. I’ll do the rest.” She did as requested, figuring she owed him this at least. “When I’m on, then Program X will be gone and you can let your handler through.” 

“Okay.” She said, watching the screen as a program named X downloaded itself and established an app on her screen. With Dash now safe for the time being, she tapped her headset. 

“Miss Eden, how are things in Paradise tonight?” 

“J.D!” 

“Who else?” 

“Oh, for fucks sake!” She exclaimed, “You’ve been gone for hours, what happened?” 

“I think this is something you’re going to need to see to believe. Send an ambulance, and a van for two criminals.” 

“Should I call -?” 

“I’ll do it.” Janet said, quickly, “For now, I just want to get the Hell out of here.” 

“Is there something I should know?” Eden asks, picking up on her tone of voice exactly like she’s trained to do. 

“No, I’m just...No. Nothing that you should know.” She said, with a sigh, “It’s been a long, long day. That’s all.” 

“There are agents on their way to your location as we speak, we’re picking up around sixty-five deceased life signs in the facility, is that correct?” 

“I think so, but I don’t know where they are. The only dead I can account for is four, and one probable.” 

“Looks like they’re all located in a room three down from the one you’re contacting me from, go check it out and make sure it’s secure.” 

“You got it,” Janet said and looked over at Dash’s body. She didn’t know exactly what to do with him but she didn’t want to move anything and possibly terminate him so she left him as is. She paused at the door frame and watched the languid beats of his heart. She’d never considered what Dash would look like as an adult. She’d only ever known him as a teenager. 

She remembered that his lips were always a defining feature of his face and his grey hair. His dark, dark eyes. But even now, they were getting away from her. It’d been so long. She shook the thoughts aside and stepped into the entry to the operating theatre and then back out into the hallway. No point in lingering here if Dash didn’t want her too. The whole base seemed to be on now that Dash had relinquished control of the system. The overhead lights were bright and each door’s handprint lock was now lit up in blue. 

She passed two doors, before coming to the one that supposedly held sixty-odd dead people. Too many, in her opinion. These people may be monsters but it wasn’t her place to decide who got to live and who got to die. 

“Eden, I’m going to need you to open the door.” There was quiet on the other end of the line for a moment, before in front of her, the door whooshed open like all the others she’d entered in this godforsaken place. The smell was overwhelming. 

Decay. 

Space was about the size of a high school gym, with a large screen at the back that was still giving off sparks. Around it, the ground was coated in a thick, fatty residue that Janet knew to be putrified organs. Bodies lined the floor, all of them very still and very, very decomposed. She didn’t want to go inside.

“Jesus.” She said, “Yeah, they’re dead. All of them.” 

“I’ll prepare a pickup,” Eden said, voice quiet in her earpiece. “Get out of there, I think we have what we need.” 

…

After a long day, there was an even longer debrief to go through before Janet made it into the front door of her home. She toed her boots off by the door, not bothering to stack them on the shoe rack before wandering into the home office. Two desks sat against opposing walls, each set with a high backed office chair, and each hosting a desktop computer among other effects. She hit the power button with her toe and collapsed onto her desk chair. The house was dark and quiet. 

The computer was a newer type, well maintained and frequently updated so it took only a few seconds to turn on and welcome her with a page from the ThingsInc operating system. Her icon is a picture of herself and Stacey, both slathered in zinc the colour of the Eerie Highschool Football team, orange and black. Her password is typed, and then up came her desktop. The wallpaper was a blown-up picture of a UFO Simon took years ago. She fished around on the floor by the computer with one hand until she found the white cord plugged into the charging dock of her phone, placing it perpendicular to her left hand. Then, she leaned back and closed her eyes.

“Slick isn’t in any of your wedding photos.” Dash’s gritty, chiptune voice spoke through the speaker of her phone. Janet didn’t bother opening up her eyes but the light from the screen indicated Dash had pulled something up on the screen.   
“Why are you looking at my wedding photos?” She asked, instead. 

“Just curious to see who volunteered to put up with you for eternity. And what abomination you were going to call a wedding dress.” 

“Do you like it?” 

“Surprisingly restrained, for you.” Janet opened her eyes to see the wedding pictures in question. Dash had selected one of her and Melanie standing under a tree, gazing lovingly into one another's eyes. Mel opted for a suit, with a yellow bowtie with a sun clip in the middle. Her hair was curled in a way that was very fashionable at the time and pulled up atop her head. The bold eyeshadow was probably also in vogue too, Mel always had much more taste than she did. 

Janet herself was bathed in a wash of yellow satin. A blouse, a tightly fitting skirt...Spaghetti straps. She smiled slightly at the picture before closing it. 

“Thanks.” 

“So, who from the old crew is still around?” He asked, and she couldn’t help but feel. Ridiculous. Even so, she humoured him. If he wanted to talk about what happened, he would. It’s not her job to play therapist. 

“Me. I work for EerieLand Marketing.” 

“No you don’t, you work for - Oh.” 

“Yeah. Oh.” 

“Never thought you’d go to the other side, Janey.” He said the tone on Marshall’s old nickname is nasal and sarcastic. 

“It’s not the other side, not anymore. And don’t call me that.” 

“Monroe.” 

“Yes, her. She works at Things Inc, Eerie’s largest employer as a product tester.” 

“They allowed that?” 

“Apparently there is not a lot of ways to test products for people with transplants other than to test them on people with transplants.” Using one hand to make a sort of round, up in the air gesture she said, “She was a heart surgeon, but turns out the stress wasn’t good for her own heart.” But it had been good for their bank account. She thinks longingly of the house up near Mayor Chisel’s mansion. The one they’d had to leave because they couldn’t afford it on Mel’s Things Inc salary. About her greenhouse, and the high ceilings and beautifully ornate fireplace. She doesn’t open her eyes to see the el-cheapo housing they live in now, it’s too depressing and this plywood shithole has never felt like home. “Simon’s still here, he runs the World ‘o Stuff and he’s just about as mysterious as the job suggests.” 

“He’s good?” 

“Yeah. He’s good.” Dash sighed, and then said - 

“ I thought about him a lot. I hoped that someone was looking out for the kid.” 

“He has a lot of friends,” Janet assured Dash

“And what about Marshall?” 

“What about him?” 

“Where’s he now? Did something happen to him?”

“Happen to him? No. No, as far as I know, Marshall is just fine. He’s just. Not here. After high school, he went to college and just. Didn’t come back. He’s a video game designer now, he reinvigorated Brain Invaders pretty much single-handedly. He does plenty of interviews and such online. He has a Twitter account.” 

“So how come he didn’t come to the wedding? Bad break up?” 

“Break up? Like romantically? No. No, he was always stuck on you as far as I know. He was invited, he just...Didn’t respond. Doesn’t respond to any of us, not his parents, not the many requests for reviews from his journalist sister, not from Simon...And not from me.” 

“And what does Simon have to say about all this?” 

“Pretty much what you’d expect. Thinks the real Marshall is missing, looking for you, or hiding out with you somewhere. That the Marshall we see is a clone, or a robot, or something.” 

“But you think he’s real. Does leaving everything behind sound like Marshall to you? Would Marshall leave me for dead?” His voice is angry, and she doesn’t blame him but getting annoyed would do no one any good. 

“I spend all day every day looking for weird things.” She says, leaning back as far as she can in the chair, “It’s not weird for someone to leave their hometown and stop being friends with the people they went to high school with. It happens all the time.” She finally opened her eyes to see Dash had opened up Microsoft Paint and was composing himself an avatar. It looked. Fine. A blank-faced, pixel grey-haired alien teenage boy in a trench coat. How Dash still saw himself. “I don’t blame him. He had to stop looking for you, for his own sake. He had no idea there was a paramilitary dimensional merge fearing cult on the edge of town. None of us did until you started pinging my handler.” 

“What happened to him?” 

“Went crazy, blew his whole life up just about. It all went sideways when he broke into the mayors' house, having convinced himself you were in his basement. Turns out there’s nothing down there but bags of rice and a homemade attempt at jam. His parents sent him off to finish high school somewhere else. He came back after he graduated, but he didn’t seem. He was Marshall. Him and Mel went to university in Germany, it’s cheaper there. She came back after a few years. He stayed gone.” Dash says nothing, just focuses on creating his avatar. Janet feels like she should tell him she has photoshop as well but doesn’t bother. Instead, she stood and shucked off her green pea coat, hanging it over the back of her chair and doing a could of stretches to try and get her blood pumping. 

“You think he just left?” Janet sighed, her chest pressed almost to her knees as she collapsed over. 

“I...I don’t know. Occam's Razor says yes.” She straightened up, “How did you find me?” 

“They had a backdoor connection to your department. Personnel files. The like. I think you have a rat.” 

“Hm, we’ve suspected that for a while now.” She confirmed. 

“I was surprised to see you there. You always seemed...Very normal aside from your shocking fashion sense.” 

“Being normal is part of the job description. Imagine if I walked around flashing my badge like I was from the X-Files.” Janet has never actually seen the X-Files, she thought it was insensitive. “No one would tell me anything. And there’s nothing wrong with my fashion sense.” Before Dash can think up something extremely witty to reply with, the front door opens. 

“Jay! I brought dinner!” Melanie turns into the little crevice of an office and stops. “What on earth is that picture on your screen?” She asks, setting down a large brown paper bag that smells like all year turkey dinner and branded with a World O’ Stuff logo on top of a filing cabinet. 

“Sit down, I think we have a lot to debrief tonight.” 

…

It took a few hours for everything to be sorted and for Janet to finally be allowed into her warm bed. They’d brought it with them from the old house, it was plenty nicer than basically everything else they owned. But even in bed, she couldn’t sleep. Could only watch Melanie’s moonlight bathed faced as the light under the door from the office as Dash continued his knowledge hunt to flicker like shooting stars. It’s the same face she’s been looking at every night for years, but also totally different to the face she had when they first got together. For one, she’d stopped waxing her eyebrows, allowing them to take a more fashionable, wider arch. All this reminiscing has made her...Nostalgic for the old times. When things were simpler. 

But that was a long, long time ago. In the time since she’d been married twice (one to Eddie, one to Mel) gotten plenty of interesting tattoos, dyed her hair, brought a house, sold a house, brought another house, brought a car, brought a bike, sold the car, sold the bike, brought another car, had a stable income, been to several fertility appointments, been to other peoples weddings, more funerals than she cares to admit, got her lifetime ban lifted from the Sushi Bar and Bait Shop, watched Simon get his dream job as Mr Radford took his dream extended tropical vacation and seen Mel lose her dream job only to find a new one. Been to her parents' twentieth anniversary. Normal. Agonizingly, painfully, dreadfully normal.

“You’re staring at me,” Mel whispered, the shape of her lips contorting to a smile. 

“How could you tell?” 

“Devon told me.” Janet drew one finger down the transverse scar on Melaine’s bare chest. 

“Snitch.” She grumbled. Mel laughed, and caught her hand between both of hers and looking at her seriously. 

“What’s on your mind?” 

“Marshall. Dash. The fact that we’ve become a boring, middle-aged lesbian couple. The usual.” 

“Boring and middle-aged lesbian couple?” 

“We used to do things, go places...Now we worry about car repayments and if we’re going to have real rice or cauliflower rice.” 

“Okay, fair enough.” 

“Do you remember when we used to wear our lingerie to bed to impress one another?” 

“I do, but since I already locked it down I figure you don’t need impressing anymore. And there’s nothing you can do about Marshall. He knows that if he wants to come back he’s welcome. What are you meant to do about it?” 

“We all thought Dash was dead, but he’s out there looking at my old high school pics. What if Marshall is out there? What if Simon’s right?” Mel sighed and rolled onto her back. Her hand landed on her sternum and played a pattern across the long scar that remained. 

“Then Simon was right, Marshall was being held captive and you did nothing.”

“You’re really comforting me.” She grumbled, grabbing a throw pillow and holding it in her arms. 

“Let me finish. If Simon is right then the only thing you did wrong was to try and do the right thing by Marshall. You’re not responsible for everyone in our old crew. I know that you think your job somehow means you have to be taking care of everyone all the time but you don’t. You’re just one woman, you have a right to your own life.” Mel was right, as she almost always was. “Devon wants to add that you’re always telling people that most things are not weird. Maybe you should take your advice for once.” 

“I hate when he’s right.” She said, into the pillow, and that makes Mel laugh. Janet’s favourite sound. 

“He says he loves you too.” Loving Mel meant loving Devon by extension. And she does love Devon, most of the time. “Why don’t you come to kiss me, Mrs Super Secret Agent? Take your mind off the world for a while?” 

Far be it from Janet to refuse such a delightful offer.


End file.
